Bongo Cat is an Internet meme that originated when a Twitter user created and tweeted a GIF of a white cat-like blob smacking a table with its two paws. [1] [2] The tweet was then replied to by another Twitter user [3] with an edited version of the GIF including bongos hit to the tune of a Super Mario World track. [4] The reply went viral and caused the GIF to be edited to many other songs. [5] [6]
The original Bongo Cat GIF originated on May 7, 2018, when an animated cat GIF made by Twitter user @StrayRogue [2] was edited by @DitzyFlama, with the edit including bongos which were hit by the cat to the tune of "Athletic" from the Super Mario World soundtrack. [7] The original artist clarified that Bongo Cat was a cat-like blob rather than an actual cat, showing a drawing of the character's full body in another tweet. [2]
It has later been edited to many other songs and many different instruments in fan-made videos, appearing on social media such as YouTube and Twitter. [5] [8] The meme has covered many songs from video game soundtracks, such as music from Persona 5 and Super Mario , as well as mainstream songs such as Toto’s "Africa" and Darude’s "Sandstorm". [9] After an increase in popularity, Stray Rogue began making and selling Bongo Cat merchandise. [1] Bongo Cat also has been made into an interactive website. [3]
In 2023, Bongo Cat's cover of "What Was I Made For?" by Billie Eilish was shared online. The cover went viral on TikTok and fans sang this version during Eilish's concerts in 2024. [10]
Polygon and Uproxx both described Bongo Cat as the best meme of 2018. [11] [12] Ellen Scott of Metro also described Bongo Cat as bringing "happiness to all, even in the trashfire [sic] year that was 2018". [13] The Daily Dot described it as the most earnest and wholesome meme of 2018. [14] Reid McCarter of The A.V. Club and Megan Farokhmanesh of The Verge both praised the meme. [8] [3] Nicole Clark of Vice described the meme as "the only good thing on the internet." [15]
Praised for its flexibility, Bongo Cat has also been compared to the keyboard cat meme. [2]
"All your base are belong to us" is an Internet meme based on a poorly translated phrase from the opening cutscene of the Japanese video game Zero Wing. The phrase first appeared on the European release of the 1991 Sega Mega Drive / Genesis port of the 1989 Japanese arcade game.
The "Dancing Baby", also called "Baby Cha-Cha" or "the Oogachacka Baby", is an internet meme of a 3D-rendered animation of a baby performing a cha-cha type dance. It quickly became a media phenomenon in the United States and one of the first viral videos in the mid-late 1990s.
Imgur is an American online image sharing and image hosting service with a focus on social gossip that was founded by Alan Schaaf in 2009. The service has hosted viral images and memes, particularly those posted on Reddit.
Rule 34 is an Internet meme which claims that Internet pornography exists concerning every possible topic. The concept is commonly depicted as fan art of normally non-erotic subjects engaging in sexual activity. It can also include writings, animations, images, GIFs and any other form of media to which the internet provides opportunities for proliferation and redistribution.
Vine was an American short-form video hosting service where users could share up to 6-second-long looping video clips. Founded in June 2012 by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll, the company was bought by Twitter, Inc. four months later for $30 million. Vine launched with its iOS app on January 24, 2013, with Android and Windows versions following.
Doge is an Internet meme that became popular in 2013. The meme consists of a picture of a Shiba Inu dog, accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English. The meme originally and most frequently uses an image of a Shiba Inu named Kabosu, though versions with other Shiba Inus are also popular.
Images and videos of domestic cats make up some of the most viewed content on the World Wide Web. ThoughtCatalog has described cats as the "unofficial mascot of the Internet".
Pepe the Frog is a comic character and Internet meme created by cartoonist Matt Furie. Designed as a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body, Pepe originated in Furie's 2005 comic Boy's Club. The character became an Internet meme when his popularity steadily grew across websites such as Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chan in 2008. By 2015, he had become one of the most popular memes used on 4chan and Tumblr. Different types of Pepe memes include "Sad Frog", "Smug Frog", "Angry Pepe", "Feels Frog", and "You will never..." Frog. Since 2014, "§ Rare Pepes" have been posted on the "meme market" as if they were trading cards.
Pusheen is a cartoon cat who is the subject of comic strips, plush toys, vinyl figures, sticker sets, and more, on Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, iMessage, YouTube, and other social media platforms. Pusheen was created in 2010 by Claire Belton and Andrew Duff for a comic strip on their website, Everyday Cute. More recently, the Pusheen character has been used in social media posts, and on the Pusheen blog.
Dat Boi is an Internet meme originating from the clip art website Animation Factory. It depicts a frog riding a unicycle. The meme garnered popularity on Tumblr in 2015 before gaining more recognition through Twitter in 2016. It is usually accompanied by a person saying "here come dat boi".
In Internet culture, a Milkshake Duck is a person who gains popularity on social media for some positive trait but is later discovered to have a distasteful history or to engage in offensive behavior. The term has been connected to cancel culture, a trend of social media, sometimes resulting in celebrities being ostracized and careers abruptly derailed by publicized misconduct.
"Mooo!" is a song by American rapper and singer Doja Cat. Originally self-published exclusively as a music video on August 10, 2018, it became a viral internet meme and amassed over 578 million views. It was subsequently released as the lead single from the deluxe edition of her debut studio album Amala. The viral success of "Mooo!" is considered a major factor in Doja Cat's internet fame, ultimately "setting the tone for her career", despite being considered by Doja Cat herself as a "throwaway" and a "joke".
Bowsette or Koopa-hime, is a fan-made, moe anthropomorphized and gender-swapped version of the Mario franchise character Bowser, in which he is transformed by the Super Crown power-up to resemble the franchise character Princess Peach. The character was originally created on 19 September 2018 by Ayyk92, a Malaysian online artist, as part of a comic strip which he posted to Twitter. Bowsette subsequently became an Internet meme and rose in popularity internationally, with related hashtags in English and Japanese trending on Twitter; several professional Japanese artists contributed their own renditions of the character on the website.
The NPC, derived from non-player character, is an Internet meme that represents people deemed to not think for themselves; those who lack introspection or intrapersonal communication; those whose identity is deemed entirely determined by their surroundings and the information they consume, with no conscious processing whatsoever being done by the person themselves. The meme gained further viral status on TikTok in 2022, with the surge of "NPC Streamers". The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the imageboard 4chan, where the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced.
Stan Twitter is a community of Twitter users who post opinions on celebrities, music, TV shows, movies, video games, social media, and other topics. It is known for using particular terminology and for incidents of harassment. Discussions in Stan Twitter spaces often revolve around public figures — primarily those in the entertainment industry.
Lasagna Cat is a web series created by production company Fatal Farm as a parody of the Garfield comic strips created by American cartoonist Jim Davis. The series was uploaded in bulk to YouTube in 2008 and 2017, and consists mainly of humorous live-action recreations of classic Garfield comics.
SiIvaGunner, formerly GiIvaSunner, is a comedic musical collective based mostly around bait-and-switch YouTube videos claiming to be "high quality rips" of video game music that are in reality remixes, parodies, and/or mashups, often incorporating Internet memes and popular music.
An extremely online, terminally online or chronically online, individual is someone who is closely engaged with Internet culture. People said to be extremely online often believe that online posts are very important. Events and phenomena can themselves be extremely online; while often used as a descriptive term, the phenomenon of extreme online usage has been described as "both a reformation of the delivery of ideas – shared through words and videos and memes and GIFs and copypasta – and the ideas themselves". Here, "online" is used to describe "a way of doing things, not [simply] the place they are done".
Zoom Cat Lawyer, also known as I'm Not a Cat, is an Internet meme that refers to a viral video taken from a live stream of a civil forfeiture hearing, and being held on the video conferencing application Zoom in Texas' 394th Judicial District Court. The video features an attorney named Rod Ponton, who is struggling to disable a cat filter that shows a white kitten instead of his face, making it appear as though a cat is speaking.
